Personal virtues suggested by the ethicability® Moral DNA Profile were
Wisdom, Fairness, Courage, Self-control, Trust, Hope, Humility, Love, Honesty, and Excellence.
Applying them to professional virtues while working with a professional ballet company...
Wisdom: Dancers need to be intelligent, in order to take in, retain and interpret choreography.
Courage: To challenge demanding roles and choreography, to push boundaries in expression and physical ability
Self-control: Body conditioning
Trust: In partners, colleagues, choreographers, directors and ballet master/mistress
Hope: To believe in yourself as a performer
Humility: Being snobbish is not appreciated in this cooporative workplace
Excellence: In dance technique and expression
Although fairness, love and honesty are all important personal qualities, I found it difficult to come up with clear examples specific to the company environment.
When I set a vague definition of 'dancers' as 'Artists that work collaboratively', I must add passion and creativity (as an artist's), responsibility and communicativeness (as a collaborative worker's), on the list of commendable virtues for dancers.
Professional Attributes
I thought about the essential qualities according to various professions, after reading the Course Reader.
'The importance of carrying out functions in a good way was in the Greeks’ view, central to various functions of the day. These functions with their inherent functions were therefore essential to an effective and civic society. Hence the following attributes would be expected of these roles to contributing to a civil society. Consideration of “good”, as an attribute could be linked
King… Authoritative
Warrior… Courageous
Judge… Just '
(BAPP Course Reader 5 Professional ethics Page 15)
What is expected from a dancer, as a core attribute? The first thing I came up with was 'beautiful', but is it always the case? It could be 'entertaining' for comical roles, or 'cooperative' for corps de ballet...
When I look a 'dancer' as one of the professions within the community, their role would be to enrich people's lives by performing on stage. Versatile qualities are required to fulfil that task, to be pleasing to the eye is not enough to truly move the audience. But it leads to question the fundamental, existence value of the arts,
'Should dancers perform for the content of the audience, and not for their own expression?'
I used to think about 'professional ethics' only in relation with professions that handle the other's lives and wellbeing, such as medical, educational, transportation or food industry, and didn't apply it to the performance industry.
My thinking behind this was that arts do not compose the essential part of human lives; regarding life support or social life, and therefore wouldn't have a strict requirement in professional ethics as the professions raised above.
However, it is what makes life abundant, and raise the contributes to the society by raising its cultural standard. Focusing on professional ethics was an eye opener for me. It made me look at a 'professional dancer' as a 'social role'.
Judge… Just '
(BAPP Course Reader 5 Professional ethics Page 15)
What is expected from a dancer, as a core attribute? The first thing I came up with was 'beautiful', but is it always the case? It could be 'entertaining' for comical roles, or 'cooperative' for corps de ballet...
When I look a 'dancer' as one of the professions within the community, their role would be to enrich people's lives by performing on stage. Versatile qualities are required to fulfil that task, to be pleasing to the eye is not enough to truly move the audience. But it leads to question the fundamental, existence value of the arts,
'Should dancers perform for the content of the audience, and not for their own expression?'
I used to think about 'professional ethics' only in relation with professions that handle the other's lives and wellbeing, such as medical, educational, transportation or food industry, and didn't apply it to the performance industry.
My thinking behind this was that arts do not compose the essential part of human lives; regarding life support or social life, and therefore wouldn't have a strict requirement in professional ethics as the professions raised above.
However, it is what makes life abundant, and raise the contributes to the society by raising its cultural standard. Focusing on professional ethics was an eye opener for me. It made me look at a 'professional dancer' as a 'social role'.
A good concluding thought - that social role might come up again when looking at culture in your professional sphere.
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